The present invention generally relates to a system and method for use with a computer network and, particularly, to a computer network interface for distributing data over a plurality of physical links to increase transmission bandwidth and, thus, increase the speed at which the data is transmitted.
The wide area network commonly referred to as the Internet is becoming increasingly popular. Internet connections provide computer users with access to a number of resources, including documents on the World Wide Web, a hypertext-based information service that allows web browser clients to access information from web servers. With an Internet connection, and using specific web browser software, a user can browse the World Wide Web. Examples of such software include Netscape Navigator.RTM. and Microsoft Internet Explorer.TM..
A suite of protocols, referred to as TCP/IP, provides a standardized format for Internet data communication between, for example, a server and client. The TCP/IP protocol suite is named for its two main protocols, i.e., the transmission control protocol (TCP) and the Internet protocol (IP). W. Richard Stevens, TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1: The Protocols, 1994, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, provides a guide to the TCP/IP protocol suite.
As is known in the art, web documents, or pages, are usually made up of multiple objects such as blocks of text, images, programs, audio clips and/or video clips. A hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) provides for the transport of bitstreams representing these objects from a remote server to a local client. As provided for by HTTP, only one object is transported at a time. Browser software often opens multiple HTTP sessions over a plurality of TCP/IP virtual circuit connections, thereby loading multiple objects in parallel. Unfortunately, this does not speed up loading of the entire web page because the total bandwidth of the underlying IP connection is divided among the TCP/HTTP connections assigned to loading individual objects.
Computer users desire increased bandwidth for connecting their personal computers and workstations to the Internet. In the context of digital data transmission over computer networks, the term bandwidth refers to the amount of data which can be transmitted over a communications link in a certain period of time and, thus, the amount of time required to transfer a data set.
Point-to-point protocol (PPP) multilink, as described in Sklower et al., "The PPP Multilink Protocol (MP)," RFC 1990, August 1996, defines the present standard for splitting Internet traffic between multiple telephone lines to increase bandwidth. However, PPP multilink, as well as other conventional schemes for splitting Internet traffic, all require special equipment and/or software at both ends of the link (i.e., at the local client end and the remote server end). In particular, PPP multilink multiplexes a number of virtual circuits to a single Internet address and causes the transmitted data packets to be fragmented before transmission. The fragments are then distributed among multiple physical links. As such, the Internet service provider must be configured as a PPP multilink host and be able to, for example, reassemble the fragmented packets.
For this reason, an interface for distributing data over a plurality of physical links which does not require modification of both client and server ends is desired.